Pierre-Louis Biojout, founder of the Y Combinator-backed AI startup NanoCorp, turned a weekend “vibe coding” project into a free browser-based multiplayer shooter set on the real streets of San Francisco’s Tenderloin district—then watched it get yanked offline after city officials and residents called the premise dehumanizing.

The game, Tenderloin Night Shift, placed players at the Eddy and Jones intersection shooting waves of “zombies” that included figures hunched in the classic fentanyl-fold posture and a Black security guard, alongside tech workers and scooters as local color. Biojout promoted it on X with the line “San Francisco couldn’t fix the Tenderloin. So I monetized it,” noting $300 in ad revenue already generated through his company’s platform.

SF Coalition on Homelessness executive director Jennifer Friedenbach slammed the project as “monetizing the dehumanization and pretend killing for fun of mostly Black and Brown residents of the poorest neighborhood,” while Mayor Daniel Lurie called it “horrific” and said it didn’t reflect city values. Biojout later deleted the post, removed the game from nanocorp.app, refunded advertisers, and pledged a donation equal to total revenue to the Delancey Street recovery nonprofit.

Supervisor Bilal Mahmood labeled the game “deeply disturbing and unacceptable,” and the episode exposed the gap between tech founders treating urban decay as satirical fodder and the people actually living in the crosshairs.